Hinchingbrooke’s private owners – Circle Holdiings – are running away from a 10-year contract after they ran the hospital into the ground so badly that inspectors said patients are being treated in an “undignified” and even “abusive manner”.

These bankers decided to put a CEO in charge of Hinchingbrooke whose previous job had been as “supply chain director” at Argos.

Why are we surprised that bankers and hedge fund investors have been found to be treating people in an “undignified” and “abusive manner”?

Bankers are unable to run their own banks competently, never mind hospitals.

So why – just a few years after bankers managed to crash the entire world’s economy with their incompetence and greed – is the government handing over our health care and selling off our hospitals to them?

More importantly… why were they given a contract which allowed a walk away clause if they had to invest more than a set amount or their profit margins were compromised.

They should have been tied into the contract for the term (duration) of the contract… if they lost money that would have been their own fault, if it bankrupted them again their own fault. Instead of getting a pot of cash for walking away (protection of profit clause) they should be paying a penalty for not fulfilling the contract.

I am sure that a lot more private provision companies would decide not to get involved if they knew their own money (and not the taxpayer) would be at risk if they couldn’t fulfil the terms… as it is the contracts are so one sided that the “provider” wins even when they loose. There is no risk to counter the rewards, its all private profit public risk.

Even where there are more “genuine” private healthcare/medical beauty companies, if anything goes wrong the private companies absolve themselves of the problems and push them onto the public NHS. If a BUPA hospital/clinic screws up an operation or post complications materialise then the “patient” is referred/pushed on to the NHS as they can’t deal with the problems.

I’m no rocket scientist but could the fact that the Tories are largely funded by the self-same bunch of bankers along with the odd passing Russian Oligarch have anything to do with why they are flogging off our most valued institutions?

so one might assume if this is run by bankers , they want to make a profit… profit = taking money away from the hospital and services for patients to give to investors !! the bankers as said can’t even look after banks so what makes this verminous gov’t think they can look after a hospital. It beggars belief that they want to make a profit out of services for sick people

NHS privatisation is an ideological principle for right-wing politicians (and that includes most Labour as well as Tories). It makes little difference to them whether it actually works for patients or not.

janx
anyone of these dr lucy reynolds, dr phillipa whitford, and prof allyson pollock..tells the story of how the nhs cannot be run for profit and of the damage the unnecessary PFI does to public services…. this one from prof pollock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz5dl9fhj7o

The problem with privatising any public service is one of staff and suppliers. Private companies can only make a profit by using less staff or inferior supplies. In the case of hospitals, using inferior supplies leaves them wide open to being sued for negligence and losing staff leaves them unable to provide a decent level of care.
Unlike other sectors where workers are expected to multi task and cover job losses consultants and Staff nurses will not empty bedpans, give bed baths, do the laundry and scrub floors so when jobs are cut ( to finance the profits) then obviously levels of care will fall dramatically.

As Jonathan Wilson said above there is also the matter of “profit risk” most privatised businesses are not privatised at all as the taxpayer carries all the risk. The railways, power companies, transport, Highways, and as we now know even major Banks all receive huge amounts of subsidies that guarantee their profits regardles of performance (why else would the French, German, Chinese etc invest if not for guaranteed profits?)

It may be that this company, being the first, failed to have this “profit guarantee” written into the contract but you can be sure that like ATOS they walked away with several years profits in the bag for doing absolutely nothing.

Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
This actually shows that the government’s privatisation of the NHS doesn’t work, and should never have been allowed in the first place. But see also Jonathan Wilson’s comment, where he asks the good question of why the privatisers were ever allowed to walk away from the contract, when the cost of running the hospital ate away at their profits. They have, after all, failed to fulfil a contract, but obviously the government’s favouring of private enterprise means that they will never face the true costs of their failure. It will just be passed on the taxpayer, as always with the Public-Private Finance Initiative and other such schemes.

It is axiomatic that health care for the masses should not be operated for profit, but in the name and purpose of health care per se. Therefore privatisation of the NHS –The National Health Service — is evil.

Hinchingbrooke is an NHS failure that was handed off, hospital pass fashion, to a private firm that never stood a chance. Healthcare does not belong to the public sector, nor to the private, and definitely not the various greedy unions. It belongs to the patient. If you want to fairly do comparisons; Mid Staffs would be proof that the public sector should never be involved in healthcare. The other question that comes to mind, is why do defend at any cost NHS ideologues want to so viciously attack a sector used by the rich, when it is offered for free to those on the NHS? I noticed when Kate was ill she drove past numerous NHS facilities to get to the private King Edward VII. Only those who wish to ignore fact to support ideology are “finished” with the private sector. The rich will continue to use them…………………